South County Water: We’Re Just A Customer, Too

Monroe News photo by KIM BRENT
Luna Pier resident Sharon King waits as Mayor Dave Davison fills her containers with Monroe water, which the Fire Department collected in one of their trucks Saturday. The truck holds 1,000 gallons of water, and the city says it will continue to fill and dispense water from the truck as needed. Luna Pier and several other south county communities are being impacted by the algae toxins discovered to have exceeded safety limits in Toledo's water system early Saturday morning.

“ South County Water does not manufacture its own water. We are a bulk customer of the City of To­ledo,” Mr. Csurgo said. “So, we are no different than any other customer that gets their water from Toledo; we are simply one water de­partment buying from an­other water department.”

SCWS is more like a dis­tribution center than anything else, Mr. Csurgo explained.

The workers there do perform various tests on the water sent to them from Toledo, however, the particular test needed to find microcystin — the type of toxins algae leaves behind — is more advanced than what they do.

“ We have to rely on Toledo for that particular test,” he said.

So, in the early hours of Saturday when the algae issue was discovered, SCWS and all Monroe County residents who receive Toledo water via SCWS — Bedford, Erie and LaSalle townships and the City of Luna Pier — were in the same boat waiting for word from Ohio as to what to do next.

Toledo became aware of the unacceptable toxin level in its water about 2 a. m. Saturday, Mr. Csurgo said, after having attended a meeting about the water crisis timeline Wednesday afternoon.

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency was contacted immediately and all areas that receive Toledo water, including Monroe County, were notified not long after that.

Water samples were then sent out to three additional testing companies to confirm the toxin level and the usability of the water. That, Mr. Csurgo said, is when confusion began to set in.

“Each site tests water different, so they were getting different results,” he said. “One place was sending the results back saying the water was fine, another said that it wasn’t.”

On top of that, Mr. Csurgo said what is considered an acceptable toxin level varies from state to state and from activity to activity. For example, while everyone was told not to drink or bathe in the water over the weekend, Ohio closed its beaches while Michigan’s remained open.

Craig Butler, the director of Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency, told The Associated Press earlier this week that he thinks the federal government should put standard guidelines in place for testing and acceptable limits.

Until a time when those guidelines are put in place, Mr. Csurgo said this crisis has come with a learning curve and local leaders are doing what they can to prepare should algae cause another problem.

“ Toledo is confident that they are treating the water adequately,” Mr. Csurgo said. “ They are doing more to treat the water and running tests more frequently now than what is required by the EPA.”

As part of its preventative measures, Toledo is asking its water customers, including SCWS customers, to conserve water as much as possible. This will help Toledo’s water treatment center to remain at a peak flow of 100 million gallons of water a day and ensure that all the water is treated adequately.

The slower the water goes through the treatment process, the better, Mr. Csurgo said. ­